


Phil Coulson Issue #0

by daroos



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Brotp, Gen, Makeover, SHIELD: The Early Days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-30 11:04:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3934417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daroos/pseuds/daroos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil Coulson was not always the suave gentleman spy newbie SHIELD agents are accustomed to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phil Coulson Issue #0

Phil had never been one of the cool kids.

This wouldn't have been so central to Phil, if it wasn't for the fact that even out of the Rangers, out of College, and out of any realm where anybody could reasonably be called a kid, he still _wanted_ to be one of the cool kids. He knew it was stupid -- academically and outside the emotional space he wished he could leave, Phil understood that being part of a particular social group held no intrinsic merit -- but he couldn't shake the yearning to be in the 'in' crowd.

Phil worked in a secret spy organization. He worked as a secret spy who dealt with all the crazy things that less-secret spies didn’t want to deal with. He was trained to operate firearms from the most modest of handguns to anti-aircraft batteries. He had gone through the toughest survival and counterintelligence programs in the free world, and passed his tests with flying colors. He could speak three languages, could sign in two more, was a black belt in Tai Chi and Aikido, and he still... He set his lunch trays down at the table of specialists and senior badass analysts -- the equivalent of the jock’s table at the SHIELD cafeteria -- and got ignored. It wasn’t hostility. It wasn’t even quite mockery. It was just indifference.

Phil sometimes mused that his coworkers could smell the years of comic book conventions on him; that they could hear the echoes of four years on debate team whenever he spoke.

Mel -- Melinda -- rolled her eyes at his continued attempts. Jasper gave him a look that clearly asked, “what did you expect?” Maria just ignored him and continued to eat her reuben and read her brief with the single minded focus of a woman with _other shit to do_.

The worst part -- well, one of the worst parts -- was that Phil _knew_ why he was doomed to a lifetime of being the man on the outside of the in crowd. He was never going to be handsome and suave like a James Bond -- Agent Ito did that waaaay too well. He wasn’t a toughened, obvious hardass, Rambo type -- Agent Jimenez. He was never going to be someone’s honeypot unless that someone had a thing for average-looking white guys who had a kind of goofy smile and looked like they belonged in an accounting pool. He wasn’t a cold-eyed sniper or a ninja or a demolitions expert or any of the _cool_ things that would have given him entree into his coveted lunchroom seat. There was no Phil Coulson on the Howling Commandos, and he just could not figure out where a man like himself fit in amongst the black, wet work of SHIELD, except at the rejects table.

Jasper made his pointer finger and thumb into a little gun and pointed it at Phil. “They found out you were on the Glee Club,” Jasper told him.

Phil paled. “They didn’t.”

Jasper gave him an, “Are you kidding me?” look and shook his head. “No, they didn’t.”

“Actually they did,” Maria said without looking up from her sandwich or briefing packet. “But that was months ago.”

Phil was very aware his cheeks were burning with blush, and he just... couldn’t do anything about it. Jasper mussed his hair, and Phil tried to slap the other man’s hand away, but Jasper’s watch got caught in the hair at the nape of his neck and Mel never actually chortled, but he could tell she was laughing at the two of them.  
\--  
“Who pissed in your cheerios?” Nick frowned at Phil.

“Hmm?” Phil was reviewing blueprints prior to a mission brief at 1630 hours.

“You look like someone gave you a turd sandwich. What’s up?” Nick leaned against the cubicle wall in a movement that made Phil nervous. He’d seen a probie agent thrown through one of the cubicle walls once -- they were only about as strong as kevlar-lined cardboard.

“Nothing.”

“Dammit Phil, Jasper is right about your sorry excuse for a poker face, and you know I hate agreeing with Sitwell. It makes him smug.”

Phil glanced at the SI blueprints again and wondered if he could just ignore Nick under the pretense of work. Ignoring the AD of your black ops government spooktank wasn’t the best idea, but Phil _monumentally_ did not want to discuss how he was a dork in spy’s clothing, and nobody really took him seriously (hence babysitting Tony Stark’s Assistant) because of his dorkishness, and who knew what other character flaws.

“Ignoring me ain’t gonna get me to disappear.”

“What do you want me to say, Nick? Just let me do my job.”

Nick raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes at Phil’s reply. He put up a placating hand towards Phil. “Fine. Just keep a tight eye on things; I got a bad feeling about this Stark business since that thing with his drone and the Air force.”  
\--  
The fact that Phil had not managed to make legitimate contact with either Tony Stark or Pepper Potts when the Ironmonger incident went down, and the fact that he was on site to provide oversight and assistance purely by chance was not lost on him.

Maria chucked him in the shoulder with her fist and smirked. “Good job.”

Phil shook his head in self recrimination.

Maria slapped his cheek lightly, gripped his chin between her strong fingers and forced him to look at her. “No, really. That was good work. Fury wants you on Stark for the press conference; thinks your in with Potts will smooth the way.”

“I should have-”

“You were here when it mattered. Come on -- I’ve got cleanup -- you go see the EMTs and get some rest.”

“I have the feeling Stark won’t go quietly into this dark night,” Phil grumbled. Maria snorted a laugh and pushed him towards the SHIELD medic station.  
\--  
There was so much paperwork after the “I am Iron Man” incident. So much. But after _that_ , Melinda and Jasper showed up with a bottle of rye whiskey and Maria showed up an hour in, and Phil was kind of a lightweight, and it was all kind of a mess.

Phil lost his suit jacket and tie somewhere between his cube and the ride back to Mel’s place, and he lost the thread there for... a while... only to come back in to Maria saying, “Holy shit, _that’s your superpower_.”

Phil didn’t have the energy or wherewithal to make much of an expression, but he narrowed his eyes slightly at Maria in suspicion.

“Oh wow, you’re right.” Melinda’s voice had a bit of a giggle in it.

Someone took Jasper’s sunglasses, still in his chest front pocket from a day battling southern California sun, and slipped them onto Phil’s nose. The world got a whole lot dimmer, and then everything got a whole lot darker still when he passed out.  
\--  
Phil woke up in a place not-his-home, with a splitting headache, a mouth that tasted like fermentation and roadkill, with a crick in his neck borne of sleeping on a couch not intended for a normal sized adult to sleep on. The air was thick with the smell of bacon and coffee which was equal parts enticing and nauseating. Maria and Jasper had woken him up singing a duet of “Don’t stop believing” into a single spatula, which was the reason Phil wasn’t in a panic that he’d been kidnapped by Russians or roofied for information and dumped. Jasper played an imaginary drumset with the hand not holding the spatula. Maria was rocking her air guitar by the time Phil made it upright.

“I hate you,” Phil said.

“You love me,” Maria signed without messing up her lyrics. Phil rotated his head to try to loosen his neck cramp. A glass of water sat on the side table with a pile of advil.

“Nice of you to join us,” Jasper said. 

Phil downed the water and drugs and felt worse for being upright and having something in his stomach. He realized he was wearing Jasper’s sweats and a Marines shirt. “Where are my clothes?” he asked, alarmed.

“I ran them down to the drycleaner. Should get the shirt and pants back in an hour. I think you left your jacket at Mel’s. You can borrow one of mine.”

“What time is it?”

Maria exchanged a look with Jasper, and plopped down on the couch next to Phil. She wrapped one long arm around his shoulders, and carded her fingers through his hair. It was the first thing that morning that actually made him feel better but he resented that he needed to feel better.

“Mel and I were talking last night,” Jasper said, apropos of nothing. Phil oozed into Maria’s side, resentment clear on his face. “Have you ever seen Clueless?”

Phil leveled a mistrustful look at Jasper, unsure if that was something he should admit to.

“My point is this: you, my friend, need a makeover.”

“After breakfast, though,” Maria said.

The three of them crammed into Jasper’s breakfast bar and the two of them made Phil eat greasy breakfast foods and drink a few glasses of gatorade along with his morning coffee. His skin felt papery and clammy and his eyes felt gritty and his head ached, but Phil was aware that he would survive the discomfort.

“I’m pretty sure the cool kids are the ones who’re supposed to be doing the making over,” Phil mumbled.

Jasper clutched his hand over his heart. “Harsh, man. I’m gonna ignore that, though. Hear me out.” Jasper held his hands up like a director framing a shot. “Old man’s retiring this year, for sure.” Jasper referred to the current director of SHIELD. “I heard from Fury, heard from Pierce, that a lot of the West Coast units are gonna get recalled to New York _with_ Fury to bump up the senior positions, and Fury’s going from AD to straight up D.”

Maria snickered. Phil rolled his eyes.

“Which means we will be moving up the chain.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is, so what if Jimenez is basically Rambo, you’re gonna be Rambo’s boss. And I swear, I know you don’t believe me Phil, but you are one poker face and a suit that fucking fits away from being the freakiest man in black this side of the Mississippi. That is your superpower -- you can be Agent K. You get this—” Jasper waved his hands in a manner that was expressive but not terribly specific.

Phil glared with evident mistrust at Jasper, but his face hurt in an indefinable hungover way and he was certain it held little force. He felt nauseous again, and the brief respite of focus that breakfast had granted was over. Phil had not been this hungover since he got out of the army, and it was all Stark’s fault.

“You have the look,” Maria said. “The scary one. The one that says ‘if you mess with me they will never find your body’. You harness that, you can rule these guys moving up.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Phil told Maria. He stared at her in what felt like confusion but probably looked more like befuddlement.

“That’s it!” Maria said. “You’re doing it!” Phil and Maria had a quiet stare off.

“You know, when I was little my uncles would hold me down and tickle me till I pissed myself.” Jasper said it conversationally.

“That’s horrible,” Phil said.

“I mean, yeah, but I was like four years old. But while they were tickling me they’d all be saying ‘it’s all in your head’. And you know what? It totally is. I’m not ticklish anymore: they just like, broke the circuit.”

“Aside from the fact that your relatives are terrible, what’s your point?” Maria asked.

“We just need to break your blush response and get it so Murderface is your default response. Or get you foundation.” Jasper frowned like was seriously considering putting makeup on Phil. “Maybe as a last resort,” he murmured to himself.

Phil, as much as he believed that _Jasper_ believed it, could not agree that the only thing between him and coolness was an expensive suit and a magical resistance to blushing. He collected Captain America comic books (and paraphernalia...) and he knew waaay more about the founding members of SHIELD than anybody who had not written a book on the topic. His hair had started to thin and he lacked the superhuman good looks or the James Bond suave charm that made up a quintessential spy. He preferred being in the van, on the radios, with a folio in his lap and the opportunity to survey an operation from ten thousand feet.

Jasper was at least a thousand percent more cool than Phil. Jasper wasn’t a large guy, and his shaved head made him look like a boiled egg in spectacles, and he rarely moved at anything more than a quick amble, but... Jasper was a scary guy, for all of that. He could smile like a goddamned rhube and play the fool while planting a tracker or picking a pocket. Phil had witnessed Jasper in a banana hammock, a huge straw hat, and a smear of zinc down his nose fake-stumble his way across a Brazilian beach and _through the middle of a cartel leader’s family beach picnic_ in order to make an info drop to an inside woman. Jasper had balls of steel and nerves of iron and the sort of patience that could out-wait mountains. Jasper had _no shame_. And Jasper could play the patsy -- the rhube, the fool, the pencil-pusher, the clown -- with the ease of a theatrical genius and the comfort of a man who knew _he was not those things_. He was a Marine. He was a combat veteran. He was only just hitting the height of his skills and career.

Phil was fobbed off on Stark-Babysitting, and even that he didn’t do very well. Maria snapped her fingers so close to Phil’s nose that he startled backwards. “Self-pity doesn’t look good on you, Phil.” Phil felt rebellious but managed to not let it show. Maria nodded in satisfaction. “Exactly,” she told him like he had just made her point, which, perhaps she had. 

Phil had earned himself a reputation as an insubordinate fuck in his early time in the army because he _could not keep it off his face_. He’d nearly gotten court martialed twice for fighting, and once for insubordination because of his ‘you have got to be kidding me’ and ‘screw you’ faces respectively. It had taken two years but Phil had learned the art of not-making-a-bitch-face. If he could learn that, he could learn to suppress the flush of embarrassment. 

Maria patted him on the cheek as though something had been decided, which, he supposed it had. “Go with Jasper: let him pull off your glasses and let down your hair.” 

Phil sighed. He’d gotten that reference.  
\--  
By the time Phil and Jasper made it to Jasper’s tailor shop - in a row of tailor shops, in what appeared to be a district of suit shops -- Phil didn’t so much feel better, as he had accepted of the fact that he felt like a day-old sandwich, forgotten, uncovered in a fridge.

“Have you ever been to one of these?” Jasper asked gently. Phil shook his head. “I figured as much. You’ll like this guy.”

The tailor was not a wizened old European man, but rather younger than Phil, well-dressed himself, and utterly unremarkable in a stylish way. By the time Phil was down to his underwear and there was another man’s thumb closer to his junk than any man’s thumb had been -- barring incipient mayhem -- Phil was an ugly sort of pink.

“See this is your problem, Phil. You blush like a fucking virgin schoolgirl.” That, of course, only made Phil blush more. The tailor rolled his eyes and ignored them with an expertise borne of practice.

Phil jolted when the tailor ran a measuring tape up his inseam and bottomed out in the crease of his hip. “Do you dress to the left, or the right?” the tailor asked.  
\--  
Phil looked up with the new poker face he was practicing, which he had been assured was both ‘dead eyed’ and ‘terrifying’ while not being threatening in a way which could be easily defined. Jasper nodded in apparent satisfaction and commented, “I want to fuck your plush full lips until you gag.” Phil tried, but the blush rose, and he burst into laughter. Jasper started chuckling when he started laughing and then neither of them could stop.

“Okay that was a little unfair,” Jasper gasped through his giggles.

Phil swiped a hand over his face and managed to reign his expression back towards stern and forbidding. “Oh, that was good. Bravo,” Jasper said. “Hey, I got you something to go with the new togs.”

“Togs?”

Jasper set a little velvet box on Phil’s desk. Phil opened it and closed it again with a snap. “No.” Jasper gave him a look that clearly said, ‘oh really’. Phil’s hand reached out without his permission and retrieved the box; flipped it open again and just stared. Jasper had gotten him cufflinks with little captain america shields on them: not cheap fanboy enameled-in-china costume jewelry, but two shields hammered into the proper convex shape of the actual shield and colored with glass that made them practically glow with patriotism.

“If I’m doing all this work to be—”

“You know what makes something cool instead of just geeky and strange?”

“Six pack abs and a PR rep?” Phil replied.

Jasper threw Phil a pair of finger guns. “Now you’re getting it. Seriously, though, it’s confidence. It’s not giving a fuck that you’re a nerd, because being a nerd is awesome. You’re never going to be able to convince everyone that suddenly your love of Captain America has vanished: embrace it. Be classy about it, don’t deny it, but don’t make a big public thing about it.”

“These aren’t making a big public thing about it?” Phil asked, and shook the cufflinks at Jasper.

“Nope. Classy.” Phil looked as though he was about to object once more so Jasper held up a hand. “You said you would trust me. Besides, you like them don’t you?”

Phil looked down at the jewelry. He’d never really owned jewelry. They were really nice. “Yeah,” he admitted.  
\--  
Melinda. This had to have been Melinda. Phil flipped open his day planner (the non-classified scheduling one) and an honest-to-god pop-up -- Phil was sure that Nick Cage had never done porno but if not, it was a _very_ convincing photo mashup of Nick Cage and an enthusiastic partner, going at it with wild abandon -- popped out at him.

“Hmm?” Goodkin asked.

“Nothing,” Phil replied, and though maintaining his composure was a struggle, maintain he did. He folded sexy-Nick back into his Wednesday schedule. Goodkin was still looking at him and Phil narrowed his eyes in return, his blank expression in place. Goodkin twitched and looked away.  
\--  
Phil was pretty sure he had gotten all of the sexy-Nick’s out of his daily effects, and Jasper’s sneak-attack innuendos had tapered off when they no longer got a response. He understood that socially he was in an uncomfortable in-between place where outward consistency and commitment to his New Persona was key. 

The first few days of aloof confidence -- or at least aloof faked-confidence -- had resulted in little more than sideyes and some subtle physical distancing in lieu of the usually-unwanted overly-hearty clap on the shoulder. After those first few days, the cool kids had scented blood, or something, and Phil found himself constantly challenged. It was like he had woken up in his own personal fairy tale and Strike Teams Alpha and Beta were his own personal evil step-siblings.

“This is good,” Maria had told him. “It means you’re establishing a new baseline -- demanding new boundaries be set.”

“Now you just have to be sure the new boundaries are where you want them to be,” Melinda added.

“Can you get the reports together for the team?” Woo asked.

_Boundaries_ , Phil’s inner Melinda May insisted. “I have a project to finish up and wouldn’t be able to get them in in time,” Phil replied with his stern-blank face. Another voice that sounded an awful lot like Teenaged-Phil insisted _if you do it maybe they’ll like you_. Even Phil knew Teenaged-Phil was kind of an idiot. Woo frowned, like a bug had just flown in his face, and nodded.

By the time the suits that had arrived in individual garment bags, their maker tags hand-stitched into the nape saying only ‘custom made’, Phil found he was actually comfortable in them. Whereas before he had wished for his BDU’s or even his dress uniform instead of the monstrous confusion that was -- to him at least -- men’s fashion, these costumes seemed to fit right. They almost fit like a second skin. Phil shot his cuffs, and always felt a little thrill of geek joy when the flash of red, white, and blue flickered in his peripheral vision.

Walking out of a briefing, Jimenez went to give Phil’s chin a little squeeze and shake -- a move the agent had executed quite a number of times and which never failed to make Phil feel like a child. Instead of freezing, Phil intercepted Jimenez’s wrist, flipped the other agent, and pinned him with his shin across the other man’s neck.

“Sorry, instinct,” Phil said while still on top of the other man. Jimenez tapped out, and Phil let him up. “You should be careful about getting into people's personal space when they’re not expecting it,” Phil continued evenly. He offered Jimenez a hand off the ground with his politely-blank face on.

Jimenez actually looked unsettled. It was like seeing a mountainside look nervous.

Jasper caught him at lunch. “I heard you put Jimenez over your knee.”

“Over my hip, more like,” Phil replied before his brain had caught up with the conversation. He closed his eyes, and opened them slowly, but managed not to blush.

Jasper raised his eyebrows in an expression that communicated he was impressed. “Well, however you like your Rambo types,” he said. He shrugged. “You hear about Fury getting a line on those two assassins?”

“Hawkeye and the Widow?” Phil asked, his attention abruptly focused on Jasper. Jasper nodded. “Who is going to—”

Jasper raised his eyebrows with a little smirk. “We’ve got the recruit orders. If we can bring them in, there’ll be a Strike Team Delta on the books soon enough.”

Phil tried to contain his excitement, but with Jasper it seemed, that was still beyond him.


End file.
